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Glenn Miller, the former North Carolina Ku Klux Klan leader, arrested in the Kansas City Jewish Community Center shootings that killed three people on Sunday, has been identified previously as an FBI informant. The FBI is known to have infiltrated the Klan time and time again since the civil rights days, during a period when J. Edgar Hoover had set his sights on flushing out supposed commies and ending the career of Martin Luther King. Miller testified for the government in a major trial where the Feds sought to convict leaders of the Far Right. In his book, A White Man Speaks Out, he claims to have been an FBI informant.

Miller is a former Vietnam vet who was a member of the American Nazi Party before turning to the North Carolina Klan. He was in the Klan caravan involved in the Greensboro massacre in 1979, where the Klan opened fire on civil rights marchers. He then formed the White Patriot Party, claiming by 1985 to have a membership of 2500 and offices in six southern states. He ran for governor of North Carolina in 1984 and got 5,000 votes.

A year later he made a try for North Carolina senator John East’s senate seat. The rally where he announced his senate campaign turned into a small arms training session. Miller was a big fan of camouflage clothing and supposedly recruited Marines at Fort Le Jeune. His group sponsored telephone messages, including one of a faked black man supposedly being lynched. He supported South Africa’s apartheid government, attacked Jerry Falwell as “Judas Goat.” And along with other far right outfits by the late 1980s, the White Patriot Party phone messages was linking the farm depression to the international Jewish bankers. The main platform of his party, Miller said, was southern independence.

Miller was subpoenaed before the Seattle grand jury that handed down indictments against the white supremacist outfit the Order in 1984. In his statement to the FBI after his arrest, Bruce Carroll Pierce, a member of the Order, had said the Order gave Miller $300,000 from robbery booty. Miller denied ever getting money from the Order. Miller said at the time,“We expect that they’re [FBI] going to frame us, plant drugs and illegal weapons on our property, pull all minds of dirty tricks on us.’’

Miller was a federal government witness in the government’s seditious conspiracy trial against the main leaders of the movement, including Bob Miles, the most important leader at the time, and Louis Beam, the most radical and aggressive, at Fort Smith,Arkansas in 1988.This was a big deal for the federal government and heavy duty prosecutors from the Justice Department in Washington and FBI agents, including one who had tracked the far right for a decade or more, were involved in the case. Miller turned out to be a wimp, whining and claiming he was a newly converted Christian. His performance was so lousy the government pulled him as a witness. The government lost the trial.

According to Leonard Zeskind, the historian of the far right, the Council of Concerned Citizens, a white nationalist group with roots going back to the fight against desegregation, ran a web piece following after Miller’s arrest:

“In the 1980′s Glenn Miller was a self-styled KKK leader in North Carolina. He made contact with The Order, which was famous for armored car heists. Apparently he convinced The Order to make him part of an “above ground/legal” wing of the group. He then provided information to the FBI and testified against other members of the “legal” wing that were receiving money obtained from the armored car heists.

“Then Glenn Miller was a star witness at the infamous 1988 sedition trials in Ft. Smith, Ark. The government tried to use The Order to get “sedition” charges against leaders of the Christian Identity movement.

“At least one member of The Order claimed later that Glenn Miller was instrumental in his conviction. He also claimed that Miller falsely claimed there was a plot against Morris Dees, which boosted sympathy for the Montgomery based hustler.’’

James Ridgeway, the author of Blood in the Face, a book that chronicles the far right during the ladt quarter of the 20th century. He also is producer of the documentary by the name along with Anne Bohlen and Kevin Rafferty.